


Autumn Dreaming

by Nell65



Series: Autumn Dreams [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Canon Universe, Gen, post season two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-01
Updated: 2015-09-01
Packaged: 2018-04-18 11:42:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4704809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nell65/pseuds/Nell65
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke limped on toward Camp Jaha, moving more easily now that she could see the top of the Ark glinting in the mid-morning sun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Autumn Dreaming

**Author's Note:**

> This is the way I know it won’t play out.

Clarke limped on toward Camp Jaha, moving more easily now that she could see the top of the Ark glinting in the mid-morning sun. She’d lost track of time, a bit, on her walkabout. The deciduous trees had flamed red and gold and then dropped their all their leaves in great drifts, crackling under her boots. The ground was hard now and covered in frost most mornings, but here hadn’t yet been any snow. It was probably something less than three months but more than two since she turned and fled what she’d become.

Leader. Princess. Heda. Warrior. General. Hero. Murderer.

None of them titles she’d ever wanted. By running away, she’d certainly demonstrated that she was none of them. None but the last, anyhow.

Now she had no idea what titles would great her.

Runaway. Coward. Selfish little girl. Prodigal child.

My daughter.

Her mother would welcome her. No matter what. Abby’s love was a rock.

She wondered when her mother’s love had become a burden. 

She would be glad to see her, all the same. It had been a long time coming, but she realized that she had some apologies to make. The wound of her father’s death would always be there, never fully healed. But Jake would have hated coming between them. It did not honor his memory to hate her mother for trying to save them all. Even when she failed.

And much as it pained her, she’d come to see that while her mother set in motion the events that led to Jake’s death – Abby had been right and Jake had been wrong. The Ark had been in no condition for the mass panic that would have followed a sudden announcement that they were all doomed. 

Keeping it a secret and doing nearly nothing – that had also been a fantastically stupid plan. But simply dropping the information bomb the way Jake wanted to do it would have been just a different kind of disaster.

He thought everyone thought like him. An engineer. Everything was a problem that led to it’s own solution. So he wanted to present the people with the problem because he believed they would come together to solve it, logically, carefully, and with everyone’s best interests in mind.

Clarke’s first months on the ground made it abundantly clear that Jake was wrong. Really, really wrong. That was NOT how everyone thought. It wasn’t even how most people thought. In fact, as a group, people tended not to think at all so much as react emotionally. And then strike out in fear. Panic. Distrust. Blind rage. 

The Ark had long been a powder keg of seething resentments and tensions and barely functioning coalitions. Jake’s well meaning, earnest desire to let everyone on it know they were doomed to die a horrible death would have unleashed chaos. It definitely would not have led to the crowd-sourced miracle solution to their dilemma that her father’s hopeful heart had dreamed of.

Not that Jaha and the council’s plan had been any better. If they needed to find out if they could live on Earth – and they did – then an advance team of guards, engineers, mechanics and agro and earth skills types would have been ideal. A hundred un-prepared teenagers without any supplies was a death sentence by another name and a really crappy experiment at the same time.

But her hands were far too bloody for her to judge others when their own desperate plans exploded in their faces.

She wanted to make peace with her mother. And apologize to the remnants of the 100 for running away. Thinking that their pain was somehow her burden and she was too weak to carry it. To carry them. Thinking that it was unfair of them to expect it of her. That it was time for the grown ups to take over. 

So she’d chucked them all over the side of her looming guilt and fled. Not so cool, in hindsight.

She needed, wanted, to apologize to Bellamy in particular. He’d gone through his own hell and back inside the mountain and she’d run away from him too.

She'd claimed she could bear the burden so they didn't have too. False bravado that choked her now. Their weight – all forty seven of them – had seemed so heavy, on that long trek back to Camp Jaha. Their halting steps. Their bowed shoulders. Their whispered thanks, gazes skittering away before they met her eyes. She’d resented them all. For needing her. For fearing her. For being afraid of what she’d become. It was suffocating her.

She’d felt them all looking at her. Knowing they weren't seeing a terrified, exhausted, grieving kid like themselves. They were seeing a hero. A savior. A holy killer.

She’d made deals, cut corners, sold more than she had, ransomed herself, pimped herself, burned grounder warriors alive, sacrificed grounder villagers to missiles, cut throats one by one in acts of mercy and penance and finally pulled a switch that irradiated an entire people. Burning them from the inside out instead of the outside in. 

All to save what in the end was a paltry forty-seven lives. And they still needed her. Wanted her. Wanted to thank her. To love her. To fear her. It was too much too fast.

Or, that’s what she’d told herself. On that long walk to the fallen Ark.

Later, so much later, she wondered if any of what she’d imagined had been real. They all carried their own weight and their own pain and probably would have told her exactly where and how far to shove it if she’d tried to carry theirs. Octavia had certainly made that clear enough. Clarke had actually been offended and hurt by that. At the time. She’d taken comfort in it since. Hoped the rest had been as angry and impatient with her false grandeur as Octavia Blake had been.

Clark had done the math as best she could. She’d saved her forty-seven lives. The price? It was roughly fifteen to sixteen dead for every one living kid. Probably more if she could figure in contingency deaths. Parents and children deprived of their warrior or farmer or hunter. People who would sicken and die from their wounds at a later time. People who had no home to return too. Maybe twenty dead to one saved. That seemed… a reasonable estimate.

The reluctance of the Ark’s leaders to pay that price seemed less horrifying now. Maybe even more generous, broadly understood. Kane and the rest had always been absolutely clear that the Ark was all about human life. Not any one particular human. The old one versus many. The Ark was dedicated to the many. 

Clarke had chosen the few. Each precious one. At any cost.

She’d considered trying to light herself on fire as a kind of atonement. She realized she didn’t have the courage. 

She was weak enough to want to live. Even knowing in her heart that she’d do it all over again. She would save the few – her own precious few – at the expense of the many. She would scorch the earth in their name because she loved them. Each individual one. Once she came to terms with that, found a kind of peace in her own refusal to die easily, or let go the ones she chose for herself, she realized she was ready to return to her people.

She figured her zen state of mind would last about a week, if she was very, very lucky, but she was determined to hold on to it as long as she could.

It was almost noon and the crashed Ark nearly filled the sky above her when she stumbled across what was clearly a recently cut, well-used path. It took her a minute to orient herself, but then she remembered that she’d come around from the west. This must be the direct route between Camp Jaha and the drop ship.

She looked again at the ground. 

Boot tracks. Horse hooves. And tires. Huh.

The path wasn’t wide enough for the wagons she’d seen the grounders use, but someone had definitely been pulling some kind of cart along. Interesting.

She was tempted to head for the drop ship, wondering why her people had – or someone had – reclaimed it. But after hesitating a few more minutes, she turned her steps toward Camp Jaha. Best get to get the initial return over with.

The trail met a road. 

She knew where she was. This was the before-times roadbed that was one of the most direct routes between the Mountain and Camp Jaha. The path she’d walked along two (three?) months ago, accompanying the broken remnant of the survivors of the 100. Her sacrifice. Her forfeit.

It wasn’t path now. 

It was a road again. A graveled road, wide enough for two wagons to pass each other.

Clarke picked up her pace as best she could, her heart suddenly beating hard in her chest and not from exertion.

The trees fell away and she entered the wide, open plain the Ark had fortuitously landed in. A trickster god’s blessing on the desperate and hungry.

Camp Jaha had changed at least as much as the road had. There were a lot more structures inside the fence, structures that didn’t look like they were made from salvage. Or at least, not salvage from the Ark itself. Half-dozen long low buildings with curving metal roofs lined up in orderly rows. Clarke stared at them as she drew closer, something tugging in her memory.

Quonset Huts. From Earth history and survival skills. These were actual, for real Quonset huts. Straight out of the great wars of the twentieth century.

The Quonset huts had chimneys. White smoke spiraled up from several of them, vanishing into the now cloudless sky and she realized she’d been smelling wood smoke for quiet a while. There was even what looked like a good forty meters-worth of stacked, cut wood lined up along what more than ever looked like an open drill ground. 

With basketball hoops.

She also noted what looked like an actual game field outside the electric fence on the far side of the open area around the compound, complete with goal posts for American Football and nets for regular football.

Looked like the Ark-wide obsession with fantasy sports teams had enthusiastically transitioned to live play. 

And game fields weren’t the only new thing outside the fence. There were also fenced off pastures. Pastures complete with water tanks and three sided sheds. Those were definitely constructed from random salvage. A dozen horses grazed in the bright sun. Accompanied by a few cows. Actual cows. Classic red and white cows from the picture books of her childhood. Clarke laughed as she gaped in wonder. She couldn’t help it. Cows!

The one thing she wasn’t spotting were her people. 

Oh, there were guards patrolling, and a few uniformed individuals moving purposefully about inside the fence, but the crowds of folk generally milling about doing nothing in particular that she remembered from those few frantic days after she escaped Mount Weather were gone.

The gates were open today and she knew the gate guards had been watching her approach since she entered the open area.

They obviously didn’t identify her as an immediate threat, but they kept their hands on their guns all the same. 

She pulled her scarves off all the way, shaking out her hair. She supposed it was possible there were grounders with hair as light as hers, somewhere, but she hadn’t seen any.

Neither had the guards. She saw them grin and ease their hands away from the triggers, and after a few brief words, one of them turned and trotted away, heading for the Ark.

When she was close enough she waved and called out, “Hey. I’m Clarke. Clarke Griffin.”

The guard laughed. “Yeah. The hair was the final clue. A lot of folks sure are going to be happy to see you.”

Clarke was nearly to the gate now. “So, where is everyone?”

The guard’s wide grin faded a bit and a wary look entered her eyes. “I think I’ll let the officer in charge explain.”

“Why can’t you?”

“Because,” and she shrugged, “I’ll mess it up. Our instructions are pretty clear on this.”

Clarke narrowed her eyes and opened her mouth to argue when she heard the footsteps of other guard running back. “Ms. Griffin! Ms. Griffin!”

“Yes?”

“This way please!”

Clarke forced herself to settle into the offered chair and repeated, “I’d really like to see my mom.”

The officer in charge had introduced himself as Major Alex Chavez. Clarke had never met him before, didn’t even remember seeing him in her life. But then, until her very short career as a juvenile delinquent, she’d had precious little to do with any of the guard.

His office was on what was now the ground floor of the Ark. It had a big west-facing window that overlooked the football fields and had a panoramic view of the snow-capped mountains that filled the near horizon. 

Major Chavez nodded. “I completely understand Ms. Griffin. I do. We’ve radioed in your arrival and your transport will be here shortly. Are you sure you wouldn’t like to visit the cafeteria? You must be hungry.”

“Transport to where?”

“To your mother. In fact, I’m sure she’ll be on it. She’s been very anxious for your return.”

Clarke narrowed her eyes. “To where, Major Chavez. And where are all the people? Where are the rest of The One Hundred?”

He sighed. “I really wish you’d let your mother explain everything.”

“I really wish you’d answer just one of my damn questions.”

Major Chavez’s lips quirked into what Clarke would have sworn was a smile. “They told me you’d be testy. The thing is, Clarke, can I call you Clarke?”

“Sure. Clarke. Go on.”

“Okay. Thing is, you’re really probably not going to like the answer to your question. You might even be tempted to storm out of Camp Jaha and vanish into the forest again. And no one, absolutely no one, wants you to do that.”

“I promise I will not storm out.”

“I have your word?” His expression was bizarrely formal. 

“Sure," Clarke said again, letting her tone and her false smile indicate her impatience with the ritual. "You have my word.”

“Mt. Weather.”

Clarke shook her head. “Excuse me?”

“Mt. Weather. The bulk of our people have relocated to Mt. Weather.”

“What the fuck for?”

“It’s a fortress in the wilderness. It has everything we could need to survive the winter and hold our gains come fighting season next spring.”

“It’s a tomb!” 

She realized she was leaning over the Major’s desk and shouting. The Major didn’t flinch.

“This whole world is a tomb. But we are alive and we intend to stay that way.”

Clarke backed up a step and consciously modulated her voice, straining for sensible and calm. “Bellamy. I need to see Bellamy.”

“He’s not here either.”

Clarke spun on her heel to storm out of the room.

The major’s voice stopped her. “You gave me your word.”

Before Clarke could decide what to do next, a junior guard knocked lightly at the doorframe. “Uh, sir?”

“Yes cadet?”

“Transport from Mt. Weather is arriving.”

Major Chavez stood. “Ms. Griffin? Your ride.”

Clarke wanted to stride angrily, head held high.

Unfortunately even the brief respite of sitting in the Major’s office had allowed her bum knee to stiffen up. So she hobbled. Head held as high as she could.

At the outer door she stopped and stared. 

Transport was a group of three enclosed vehicles surrounded by a half dozen small four-wheeled machines, each with a single rider, rifles slung on their backs. She realized these were the vehicles that had made the narrow tracks on the route to the drop ship.

The – what was the word? She dredged her memory. Convoy – yes – the convoy was just now entering the main gate. The three larger – Cars? Jeeps? Utility vehicles? – she’d never really paid attention to the types of cars in the old vids – never expected to see any in her lifetime – were lined up in the middle. 

The vehicles pulled up into what she now recognized as a curved drive that swept around the drill space. 

A rear door in the second enclosed vehicle popped open almost before the wheels had stopped moving and her mother slid out. 

The first flurry of hugs and tears over with, and yes there were tears on both sides, Clarke stepped back. “Mom. I don’t understand.”

“I know. There’s a lot to explain. Come on. We can start on the way back.” Abby turned to Major Chavez. “Thank you for calling as soon as you spotted her.”

“Of course. I know how anxious everyone has been.”

“Back? To Mount Weather? Mom, I can’t. I can’t go back there! It took everything I had just to come here!” 

This wasn’t, factually speaking, actually true. Once she realized she’d been ready, it was an easy trek. Emotionally, anyway. Damn knee. But she’d never even considered the possibility her people would have moved into Mount Weather. The news that they had left her shaky, with clammy hands and pinched lungs. Scattered visions of burned bodies filling her memory.

Abby turned at looked at her. Really looked this time. After a long moment, she nodded. “Okay. I get that. You need to adjust. But Clarke,” Abby paused abruptly. Then with a sharp shake of her head, went on, “You are a prize. A symbol. A target. You will be safest inside Mt. Weather. Everyone around you will be safer too.”

“Why the hell are you inside that place at all?”

“You took it, Clarke. You won it. You and Bellamy and the rest. At great cost to yourself and to everyone else. It’s yours – and by default ours – by right of conquest. And it is a rich, rich prize. It’s also shelter, food, supplies, information, history. It’s not everything we need in the long run, but a huge advantage for the present.”

“I don’t understand.”

“We broke the old order here, Clarke. First by sending you, and then by following ourselves. We didn’t know there was an order to break, but there was. Whatever we might think of the way the Mountain Men held the tribes in check, they did. Now that check is gone. The tribes are jockeying for position and power, testing themselves against each other and against us. New alliances take time and trust, but we may not have much time. We have no trust at all. But we need the alliances anyway. It’s best to deal from as much strength as we can.”

“So it’s all war, all the time? Haven’t we done enough harm?”

“Yes. We’re trying Clarke. We’re trying to do better. You coming home will help with that.”

“By becoming mountain men ourselves?”

“No. We aren’t the mountain men. We are Arkers. Our goal is the same as it ever was. To keep the human race alive. To deserve to survive.”

“By living in a crypt?”

“Clarke. Honey.” Abby let the hand she’d raised drop. Seemed to recognize that her appeal was falling on closed ears and changed course. “We try not to drive after dark, so let me tell the convoy to go back without us. Major Chavez? Can you find us quarters for tonight?”

Chavez assured her they could and within a remarkably short time Clarke found herself on a table in the infirmary, her mother poking and prodding at her knee. 

“It’s fine, mom. I just twisted it when I slipped a week or so ago. It’s healing on it’s own. Really.”

“Okay,” Abby sighed and smiled as she straightened up. “You’re right. Nothing but time and staying off it as much as you can.”

Clarke rolled her eyes. “Earth hasn’t been big on opportunities to sit still.”

Abby actually laughed. “More than you’d think.”

Which made Clarke blink and remember. “Mom? How’s your hip?”

Abby stilled while washing her hands. In hot running water Clarke noted. “Mostly healed,” she replied after a second or two, shaking off the excess and reaching for a towel. “I can feel weather shifts now though. Something I always thought was a fictional trope turns out to be based on something real.”

“Raven? Harper? Everyone else?”

“It’s almost supper time. Let’s go eat, and I’ll try to answer all your questions.”

Clarke pushed her fork around the plate, chasing the last of the crumbs of the sweet desert bread. “Okay. I can accept the strategic and tactical value of claiming the fortress at Mount Weather and all it’s resources for ourselves. But why actually live there?”

“The winters here are cold Clarke. Colder even than living in space. And much, much wetter. We’re still acclimating. Our people have been sick, a lot. Colds. Flu. Even some pneumonia. They need to be warm. And well fed. Especially the children. The mountain offers all of that. Including year round fruits and vegetables from their hydroponic gardens. Also too – not everyone is as at ease in the open as you are. Our people are used to corridors and confined spaces. The mountain – it feels familiar. Comfortable. Safe.”

“A trap. A tomb.”

“No. We’ve opened up all the exits we’ve found – turns out there were a lot more than the Wallaces acknowledged. Most were unused, of course, because the people couldn’t go outside without radiation gear. But it’s neither a trap nor a tomb. It’s just a base. And not everyone lives there.”

“Right. Some live here.”

“Yes. In rotations. And we’ve opened an outpost at the drop ship as well.”

“Why?”

“The Grounders respect strength. We won the fight,” Abby paused, and then reached over and closed her hand over Clarke’s, “You kids won that land. At great cost. Holding it as our own respects that. Abandoning it would make us look weak. Vulnerable. Beatable.”

Clarke pulled her hand free and into her lap. “So we have three outposts.”

Abby raised her chin. “We have all the territory the Mountain controlled, extending now out to include the drop ship and Camp Jaha.”

“And we guard it against all comers.”

“Well, yes and no. We’ve been working hard to create trade relationships.”

“So we didn’t steal the horses and cows?”

“What?” Abby looked shocked. “No we didn’t steal them! Clarke! We’re trying to make friends, not enemies!”

Clarke remembered TonDC, Lexa’s camp. All those warriors. Their steady disdain for the 100 and the people of the Ark. “What could we have that the grounders could possibly need or want?”

“Treatment for the reapers, to start with.”

“Oh.” Clarke felt a little ashamed that she’d forgotten all about them.

“And medicine and medical training for their doctors. They’ve created quite an amazing pharmacopeia over the last century, but vaccines and antibiotics are better still. And we have much better surgical skills and facilities than most of them have access too. Also, genetic counseling.”

“Genetic counseling?”

“Birth defects are terrifyingly common among the Grounders. Their usual treatment is infant exposure.”

Clarke blinked. “Infanticide?”

“They’ve had very limited resources. Caring for children or adults who can’t pull their own weight was impossible, and heartbreaking, for them. The mountain – given their own genetic problems – had actually made some breakthroughs that we hadn’t in terms of genetic sequencing and testing. Once we explained what we can do we’ve been approached a dozen times now by pregnant women and their partners, hoping to know ahead of time what they might be in for.”

“I see.”

“Clarke, we are trying to be good neighbors.”

Falling asleep in a real bed for the first time since she’d left the Ark for the mountain, Clarke wasn’t sure she believed anything her mother said. Or rather, she was certain that everything her mother said was technically true, but there was much she still wasn’t sharing. Clarke wondered what it was, and when it would show up to bite them all in the ass.

~~~~

In the morning Clarke woke up planning to refuse point blank to ever return to Mt. Weather. Abby, who knew her too damn well – at least when it came to some things – woke up prepared to fight her. 

Being Abby, she didn’t waste time with opening feints. Full house, on the table. She handed Clarke a mug of steaming sweet tea, smoothed the covers and sat down uninvited, trapping Clarke in her own damn bed, and said, “Your friends will be very anxious to see you. Raven and Wick, Monty, Nathan Miller, Harper, Monroe, Jasper, all the rest – they are all waiting. Wondering what you’ve been up to, wanting to see for themselves that you’re really all in one piece. They’ve missed you so much. Worried and fretted about you.”

The calculated guilt thrust sank home. Damn her. She sipped her tea rather than answer right away. Suddenly it hit her. The glaring absence was just too much. “Bellamy? He’s not anxious to see me too?”

Abby chuckled faintly. “I’m sure he would be, if he knew. But he’s away.”

“Away?”

“Yes. Out of the blue, three weeks ago, John Murphy reached us by radio.”

“Murphy?!”

“Yes. It seems he took off with Thelonious, on his quest to find us a safe haven. They got separated, and John washed up at a sealed bunker on the coast of what once was Connecticut. Turns out he has learned a great deal about what caused the destruction of the world ninety-eight years ago. And he has reason to think it might still be out there. Might target us.”

“No shit.”

“No shit.” Abby frowned. “Anyway, we needed someone to go get him. Or at least retrieve all his intel. Bellamy volunteered to lead a small team. Lincoln and Octavia were willing to go as well. A few Grounders from Lexa’s alliance agreed to travel too, as guides. The route is quite dangerous – what was once most of New York City and half the state is now a treacherous desert wasteland – so they are skirting well to the west and then the north so as to stay in the forest lands. Lands that belong, as it happens, to the Ice Nation. So they are also traveling with a handful of fully recovered warriors from that tribe. Escorting them home.” 

“Have you heard from them since they left?”

“Yes. The Mountain Men had satellite phones. Bellamy calls in every evening. They should arrive at Murphy’s bunker in two more days. They expect to be back to Mt. Weather – with or without Murphy – in two to three weeks.”

“And Lexa? How are her people?”

“Restless. Shaken. Stirring. Best we can tell.”

“Explain.”

“Could I explain in the car, on the way back?”

Clarke closed her eyes, shivered, and then gave in. Whatever ghosts haunted Mt. Weather were just going to have to suck it up. The murdering sky princess was coming home after all. Somehow it seemed inevitable. Maybe even just.

The trip turned out to be surprisingly short. Barely an hour out from the gates of Camp Jaha they turned onto a hastily repaired paved road.

“Mom?” Clarke interrupted her mother’s overly detailed explanation of the familial clan structure that underlay the nominally distinct tribes of Lexa’s shaky alliance. “Where did this road come from?”

Abby smiled. “It was always here. Just overgrown. There were some washouts,” the utility vehicle (that’s what type it was, Clarke had learned) suddenly swayed and bumped, “like that, that we’ve filled in temporarily. Come spring the engineers plan to dig it up and resurface the whole thing.”

The driver, a man Clarke vaguely recognized from the Ark, interrupted. “Should we head for the garages, Dr. Griffin?”

“No. Let’s take Clarke to the front gate, if you don’t mind?”

“Sure thing.” He picked up the radio handset from the control panel and sent the other two cars and the not-at-all-creatively-named four wheelers off on a side road while they continued to climb up the switchbacks.

“Not worried about ambush up here?” Clarke asked.

“No. Not up here.”

“Because we’re inside the gas barrier now?”

“We are, but it’ still completely out of commission. And will remain so. The last thing this world needs is more artificial acid fog.”

“There’s not-artificial acid fog?”

“Turns out, yes. There is. It may be the result of the Mountain Men inadvertently seeding the atmosphere, or maybe they got the idea from the fallout storms. Either way, yes. Acid fog is real.”

“I never saw any!”

“You were west of the lake, too far into the foot hills. The fogs hug the lowlands and the delta by the sea. When they come.”

“Wait. How the hell do you know where I was?”

“Look! We’re here!” Abby cried.

The distraction worked.

At the top of the ridgeline, the wooded slope that had once marked the main entrance to Mt. Weather was completely gone. The trees had been cut back for a hundred meters or more in every direction and the ground leveled out. Where there had been overgrown bushes and trees, there were now several buildings, including what had to be a barn with paddocks out back and to the side and honest-to-god hitching posts in front. There was one other large new building. Like the barn, it was constructed from what had to be wood. Smooth wood boards, fading to a warm cinnamon brown. The other four buildings were Quonset huts. Behind them were a scattering of Grounder-style field tents.

The main gate to Mount Weather, they gate they’d opened at such cost and where Lexa had abandoned them to face the Mountain alone, stood wide open. The passageway behind it that led into the mountain fortress itself was brightly lit. A steady stream of people were wandering in and out, all of them passing under the very watchful eye of a half dozen Ark guards.

Clarke gaped. “What is all this? And where did all these people come from?”

“Come on. I’ll show you. And the mountain had tracked all of the pieces of the Ark. We found more survivors.”

The larger wooden structure turned out to be a meeting hall. A meeting hall that today hosted what looked a hell of a lot like the old Exchange on the Ark. Tables covered in various goods, stall keepers seated behind their wares, shoppers wandering about. Some of the shoppers were even Grounders.

“What are they doing up here?” Clarke whispered to her mother.

“They have family here, receiving medical treatment or who are in recovery from the Cerberus program. That’s what’s in the other buildings. A fully equipped field hospital and recovery wards.”

“How did you guys make all this stuff?”

“Most of it we didn’t.” Abby touched her elbow. “There’s a small canteen outside. We can sit there while you catch your breath.”

“I’m not out of breath, mom.”

“Are you ready to go inside, then?”

“Lunch sounds good.”

“Whomever stocked Mt. Weather – the US Government we assume – planned to survive whatever came and then emerge into the new world and build again. So they had all of this and more in vast storerooms below the hydroponic floors. They horded what they could have shared or traded for the genetic materials they needed to adapt to the surface.”

“Are we sharing it?”

“We are trading some, and using some.”

“And hording the rest.”

“Clarke. We’ve been on the ground less than six months. Blowing all our resources even before the first winter solstice would be unbelievably reckless.” Abby shrugged ruefully. “Even for us.”

“What else did they have?”

“You saw the art. The libraries. Recorded music and movies – a far greater collection than we had on the Ark, though focused hugely on the cultural production of the western world. Labs. Data processors. Seeds. Genetic material and frozen embryos for farm animals. Vehicles. Heavy machinery – earthmovers, diggers and the like. Gas. Lots and lots of gasoline. Even three helicopters that no one is willing to try flying yet. Tools. The lumber for the meetinghouse and the barn is new. Turns out we have chain saws and the equipment for a water powered saw mill.” 

“They were ready for anything.”

“Not really. Not for a world they couldn’t walk in.”

Abby flagged down the woman working the counter and ordered two sandwiches and something called coffee. Once they’d carried their food to one of the outdoor tables, Clarke sat down and said, “I haven’t forgotten by the way.”

“Forgotten what?”

“That you knew I came from the west.”

“Ah. That. Its easier to show than tell.”

“Of course it is.”

“Eat up. What do you think of the coffee?”

After they handed their dishes back, Abby brushed her hands on her trousers, took a deep breath and said, “Ready to go inside?”

“No. But I will anyway.”

Walking through the front gate was wildly different than coming up through the deep tunnels far below. Lighter for one thing. And smelled far better. After they passed through two sets of sliding glass doors, (humidity control, her mother murmured), the white hallways were lined with sculptures. 

Her determination not be impressed by the art collection of vampire thieves was completely undone when they passed a roughly sculpted bronze of a heavily pregnant woman. Clarke stopped and gasped. “Mom? Is that a Picasso? For real?”

“Yes. From the Hirshhorn Museum Collection.”

“Well fuck me.”

Clarke ignored her mother’s side eye.

“There is so much they saved,” Abby said. “They didn’t share any of that either. We want too, but, at least right now, the tribes aren’t interested. The old world is dead to them. Far more dead to them than to us.”

“So what do you plan to do with it?”

“We,” Clarke heard the faint stress Abby put on the word, “will save it and preserve it best we can. For whomever comes after us. Whenever they are interested.”

“This way,” Abby suddenly cut to her left and called an elevator. The rode down to what Clarke immediately recognized as the command floor. The one where a not-quite madman had painted meticulous copies of masterworks and hazy half-remembered landscapes of a world bathed in sunlight. 

Her heart started racing even faster and her palms damp with sweat, Clarke muttered, “I swear to God if you are taking me to the command and control room I will never forgive you.”

“No. I’m not. We’ve set up the screens in what must have been intended as mission control for something space related.”

They turned down a corridor Clarke hadn’t traveled before and her breath eased in her chest.

The room, a slopped amphitheater, was set up to face banks of screens. Three techs bent over desks filled with small computers. It reminded Clark of the few times she’d been inside the monitoring stations on Alpha.

“We can monitor everything but locker rooms and private sleeping quarters from in here. We also,” Abby gestured, “have a nearly 360 degree view of the land that fell within the territory claimed by Mt. Weather. They had a very extensive network of cameras and sensors, supported by satellites and drones. There was no sneaking up on them.”

Light began to dawn for Clarke. “How far does that territory run, south and west of the lake?”

“Far enough.”

“So, you’ve been watching me. This whole time.”

“Yes. Both from here, and from a guard post above your campsite.”

“What the fuck, mom.”

“You needed time. But we needed you not to be taken again. You’re an avatar now, Clarke. A symbol. A hero. A token. And an extremely valuable hostage for anyone who wanted to pry resources out of our hands.”

“I thought I was alone. I thought I survived by my own hand.”

“You were and you did. No one helped you. In fact we kept people away. Though, if it had looked like you couldn’t make it. A badly broken leg, for instance,” Abby looked meaningfully at Clarke’s bum knee, “Or say, pneumonia, and we would have brought you in.”

“Now I feel like a child.”

“No. A woman who needed time to come to terms with herself. There is so much we can’t give you Clarke. But we – all of us, your people, your family – we could give you that.”

“I’d look really foolish running away again, now, wouldn’t I?”

“No. But I hope you won’t.”

“Can you take me to Raven now?”

“Yes. Of course.”


End file.
